Time Spent on Traveling to Auditions

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>If my D decides to major in music, what kind of time might she expect to spend on traveling to auditions and how much school should we expect she will miss?</p>

<p>I have been reading that 8 live auditions could be a possibility. We live on the west coast and so may be traveling east for a fair number of auditions. </p>

<p>My reasons for asking are 1) planning senior year classes - if she misses too much in rigorous classes this may affect her grades. 2) estimating how much work her parents need to plan on missing. 3) educating her high school counselor, who may not know what the norm is for music school applicants since the public high school probably has very few students that go on to music.</p>

<p>I'd like to hear how much time others spent on auditions, and whether high school administrators and teachers were understanding or not. Thanks --</p>

2

<p>You might consider unified auditions, that way she can do several in one trip.</p>

3

<p>We aren’t there yet but DS has a friend who is a senior and auditioning at 7 schools for voice. He has made two trips to the east coast as far as I know. I think he has another trip in addition by plane. Each trip has covered two or three different schools. They seem to schedule right around the same time. Mainly happened Jan and Feb. The high school is really supportive and has a quite a few kids that go into music or voice so they have a form letter an all set up. The big problem is getting the AP work done but he’s hanging in there from what DS says.</p>

<p>To answer the time off question: He is spending 3 days this trip, spent 4 days the last trip and a third trip of 3 days coming up.</p>

<p>It is something to think about though…DD had a friend in hs that was a recruited athlete and she crashed bad during fall recruitment and had to work really hard to bring grades up. She is attending Yale so it was all worth it but what a hard time for that young lady.</p>

4

<p>Sorry, about above post^. I thought I was in the MT forum.</p>

5

<p>I think it depends largely on the instrument, My D plays flute and will have missed 10 days of school for 7 auditions all in 5 weeks time. We opted to do all live auditions at the schools because of the competitiveness of her instrument. Her teachers have been great about giving her extensions and letting her make up tests.</p>

<p>Many of her schools only offered auditions on Fridays, so that meant missing at least 1 day of school and in our case, at least one more day for travel to many of them. By the time we added in last minute extra days for this miserable weather, well, we were at 10.</p>

<p>Most of the auditions are in Feb. so at least they were after mid-year grades were turned in.</p>

6

<p>The answer depends a lot on whether or not you are able to schedule auditions so that you can do two or three per trip. Unfortunately the scheduling of auditions gets done fairly late in the process and you may not have a lot of control over the time and date at some schools. Eight live auditions is a lot for a music major but certainly not unheard of. I think five or six would be more comfortable, but if you have someone going into a competitive instrument like violin or flute, of if she sings soprano then it may be good to do more. Also be aware that some schools require a pre-screening recording for some instruments and voice types. If she does not pass the pre-screening round she would not be invited to audition at that school.</p>

<p>There are a couple of things that you can do to cut down on the missed time. First, you could see if any of the schools she is interested in run regional auditions somewhere nearer to where you live. It is best in most cases to do the audition at the school because there she is more likely to meet the teachers for her instrument or voice. If you live some distance away from the school, the regional auditions can be a good compromise. Some schools also accept recorded auditions, either as an audio CD or a video DVD. You could make those or hire someone to help you make them at times that would be less disruptive of the school schedule.</p>

<p>The second thing you can do is to apply to more schools than you think you will need, planning to cancel some of the later auditions based on the results of the earlier ones. My daughter did this, applying to ten schools but auditioning at only six after an early acceptance and the one for the school farthest away was via a video. If using this strategy your daughter will want to have an early audition or two at a school that either has rolling admissions or a non-binding early review process.</p>

<p>Be aware that there are some music schools where the grades are fairly important and there are some at which the audition is the only thing that matters. If she is applying mostly to the latter type, then easing up on the scholastic classes in senior year can give her more time to practice and result in less missed work due to auditions. If also applying to schools that are more driven by grades and test scores, then it would be wise to continue with the harder classes.</p>

<p>How much work the parents have to miss depends a lot on your daughter. Some students would be fine with making the trip on their own, and some would really need at least one parent to come along. If she has to do a few trips and needs someone to go with her, then you could easily lose a week or two of work time. It may also be possible to split this between two parents, or to find a trusted friend or relative to go in place of a parent.</p>

<p>In my experience, high school counselors vary quite a bit in both the amount of experience they have with students auditioning for performing arts majors, and in their tolerance for not doing things by the book. Also, some schools are stricter than others regarding excused absences. How you and your daughter deal with the counselor depends a lot on these things.</p>

<p>In our case, there were four trips involved to cover the five schools. One was about eight hours away by car, so roughly equivalent to flying cross country. She missed school on Friday for us to drive out there, had the audition on Saturday and we drove back on Sunday. Another involved driving about five hours starting right after school on Friday, auditioning Saturday morning and driving back that afternoon. The third trip involved driving two hours on Friday evening, auditioning at one school on Saturday afternoon then driving six more hours that evening for an audition at another school on Sunday afternoon. We then drove five hours back to home, getting there late Sunday night. Daughter slept in the next day and missed a half day of school. The fourth trip was about four hours away and was the only one she had that was not on a weekend. We left after school the day before, had the audition the next day (missing a day of school) and drove back the same night as the audition. We got back early enough for her to go to school the next morning.</p>

<p>So, for five auditions, she missed a grand total of two and a half days of school and I missed two full days and two half days at work. I think she could have done some of the trips on her own, but chose to drive her to all of them so she could be doing homework or sleeping for much of the trip. Of course, we live in the east a lot closer to all of the schools where she auditioned so the logistics were much easier because we could drive and go on our schedule rather than the airline’s.</p>

<p>We were fortunate to have a school system that allows two days of excused absence per semester in senior year for the purpose of visiting colleges. We were also fortunate to have a very cooperative counselor who was willing to do the paperwork and get out of the way regarding school selection because he realized we were a lot more competent in selecting music schools than he was.</p>

7

<p>Another thing that worked for us was keeping a close eye on the dates posted by various schools and signing up early for auditions scheduled for holidays like MLK Day or President’s Weekend, when the high school was closed.</p>

<p>We also tried to schedule as many auditions as possible in the “early” group, before Christmas, so her absences were spread over two different semesters.</p>

8

<p>Previous thoughts:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/930535-how-many-music-auditions-did-you-do.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/930535-how-many-music-auditions-did-you-do.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/309522-auditions-there-magic-number.html?highlight=magic+number[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/309522-auditions-there-magic-number.html?highlight=magic+number&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/883420-auditions-dont-kill-yourself.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/883420-auditions-dont-kill-yourself.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The audition “bible”
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/240407-audition-tips-info.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/240407-audition-tips-info.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Some potential pitfalls:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/933229-what-if-you-cant-afford-travel-audition-schools.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/933229-what-if-you-cant-afford-travel-audition-schools.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/213753-regional-auditions.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/213753-regional-auditions.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/653104-audition-scheduling-headache.html?highlight=auditions[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/653104-audition-scheduling-headache.html?highlight=auditions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Related topic, a bit of forward thinking:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/707827-how-did-your-high-school-kids-balance-school-music.html?highlight=high+school[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/707827-how-did-your-high-school-kids-balance-school-music.html?highlight=high+school&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/58045-music-students-high-school-academic-loads.html?highlight=high+school[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/58045-music-students-high-school-academic-loads.html?highlight=high+school&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>My personal observation is that the amount (or lack) of cooperation is a direct function of the number of previous students a high school has had go through competitive audition centered performing arts applications. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, not every one has that luxury. Attempting to educate the uniformed can be compared to eliminating into an opposing wind.</p>

9

<p>Some schools give seniors a hard time about audition trips (too bad, because all they need is more stress.) Other schools are supportive. I hope your daughter has a supportive school.</p>

<p>As others have pointed out, depending on which conservatories/universities your daughter decides to apply to, you can sculpt her schedule. My daughter applied to 8 schools and did 7 live auditions (one by DVD because two auditions were on the same day.) For most of the schools, we did not have much choice or advance notice about timing of auditions. In my daughter’s case, her two New York auditions were scheduled on the same day at the same EXACT time. So we had to ask one to reschedule, and she was given a slot a whole week earlier. We live on the East Coast, so it was not a problem, but that would have been a hardship for many people.</p>

<p>My daughter applied mainly to conservatories plus a few universities where the academic bar was not too high for conservatory applicants (e.g., IU Jacobs.) This strategy may not have worked if she were applying to Rice or Northwestern, but we talked to her guidance counselor at the end of her Junior year and requested a light senior schedule. So for example, instead of Calc she took Consumer Math (which turned out to be a really great course), and instead of AP English she took regular honors English, etc. She did no SAT test prep because her scores would not need to be sky high. This way she was able to concentrate on practicing and could manage to keep up with her schoolwork without worrying about travel. </p>

<p>Good luck-- this is not an easy system. It’s too bad that classical conservatories don’t have unifieds, the way acting conservatories do. You could do regional auditions, but I’m pretty sure that auditioning on-site is much more advantageous.</p>

10

<p>lastbird, I guess your D is a junior? If you have not already lined up college trips and sample lessons for this coming spring break, it would be a good idea. That would at least help in case you end up needing to do regional auditions or recordings to those places. In our case I drew the limit at 3 trips away. Each one is costing 2 school/work days. (Not to mention airfare and hotels). We were not able to do multiple auditions in one trip, the schools were just exactly too far away, especially given weather concerns. Our school has plenty of top athletes (including an Olympian) and performers, so the administration and teachers are used to kids being absent and are supportive. We live near a large city so D did 2 regional auditions, 2 local schools, one recording and will have 3 away trips. The away trips are at her top 3 choices. She is applying to university programs.She is taking 2 AP classes. Her first semester grades were not fantastic. We have to keep our fingers crossed. Fortunately she has had some encouraging news from 2 places already, so she is at least going to college somewhere!</p>

11

<p>Our schools allow up to 5 days of excused absence for college visits. So we made sure we only used one for the initial college visits and would have the others for auditions if we needed them. We only ended up using one more day, last Friday for Belmont. We also scheduled most of ours late to fall after the end of the January grading period. My husband and I traded off going with our S to the auditions. He went to the closer ones so he did not miss any work days and I went to Belmont since I am not working right now.</p>

<p>We ended up with four auditions over three weekends, and all of them were different. It has been a tough two weeks for my S, but he did it! He thinks he would have preferred spacing them out a little more, but he was glad he had more time to prepare too.</p>

12

<p>I think it also depends of the level of school that your daughter wants/expects to go to. In our case, our state provides a decent automatic scholarship which is not all that hard to qualify for, so we decided to look mostly at in-state schools (the scolarship is for instate schoools public or private). We also quickly decided that a conservatory was not the best place for him to be. My son is interested in marching band, so we were able to quickly narrow down the list of in-state schools that offer his intended major and have marching band, and further reduced the list based on school demographics (looking for at schools with close to 50/50 gender ratios and average diversity of ethnic background), then we eleminated highly religious schools. By the time we were done filtering schools, we found that there were only three colleges in state that worked for him. We picked one similar out of state school for a grand total of 4.</p>

<p>Of those four, one is a reach acadmically, one is a slight reach, the other two are safeties.</p>

<p>My son was selected to be in the University of South Carolina Honors Band (for high school students), which was going to require that he miss an excused day of school. Turns out that the college had already arranged for my son to do his audition that weekend during the Honors Band program. We basically killed two birds with one stone, but then we found we could kill a third bird with that same stone…</p>

<p>One of the other colleges had an audition day on the Monday following the Honors Band program (which lasts until Sun afternoon), so we scheduled that audition day. He will drive to USC by himself after school on Thursday, participate in the honors clinic (staying on campus) until Sunday, then me and my wife will drive to USC on Sun to see the concert. He will then going to follow us to the other college - about a three hour drive, where we will get him a hotel room, locate the building that he is going to audition in, and we will the return to our home town - he will deal with the audition and drive back by his lonesome. Since we accompanied him to his first audition, I think he will be OK to do the next couple on his own.</p>

<p>His first and fourth auditions are on Sat and are close enough that we can drive to them the morning of the auditions. He will have only had to have missed 1 day of school directly due to auditioning.</p>

<p>I think the audition process can be whatever you choose to make of it. You can travel all over the country to a dozen auditions, or you can just find a few suitable schools within a reasonable distance. Just depends on your finances, time, and what type of college your student is looking for.</p>

<p>Oh yea, I forgot to mention this, but two of the auditions that my son is going to are basically all day affairs with somewhat extensive testing, campus tours, etc, the other two are fairly quick, play and leave deals.</p>

13

<p>To be more specific, my D is a sophomore and her instrument is piano. Probably she will be applying to programs which look at her grades too, and she possibly may be taking 2 AP courses her senior year. This is in the future, so it all may change, but I’m thinking this means she won’t be looking at standalone conservatories. I have NO idea what her level is and she is hoping to attend a summer program to figure that out.
It’s great to hear other people’s experiences and to get an idea what could be in her future. Thank you!</p>

14

<p>Piano performance is very competitive, so she may need more auditions rather than fewer. It does not mean you have to rule out the stand-alone conservatories before even knowing her level. There are pianists at those schools who have done very well academically and very well musically. </p>

<p>If you have not already seen them, you may wish to have a look at the first eleven articles at <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/258796-so-you-want-music-major-one-familys-experience.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/258796-so-you-want-music-major-one-familys-experience.html&lt;/a&gt;
They were written about the experiences of a young bass player, but much of the process is the same regardless of the instrument or voice.</p>

15

<p>Our school also allowed 4 or 5 days for “excused” absences due to college visits - but if I’m not mistaken, this was PER SEMESTER and applied to VISITS, not auditions that are often out of the student’s control. And frankly, once we pressed, we learned it did not really apply to theater or music students doing live auditions. In my opinion, it simply makes no sense for a high school to limit a student’s availability to audition for the very college future they’ve been working toward for so many years. </p>

<p>I would have a serious heart to heart with any administrator attempting to prevent my son from auditioning for any colleges he was interested in.</p>

<p>We are on the West coast and did two trips back east, but one was before the Winter break and amounted to only a long weekend (one or two days missed). The second trip was either 4 days or the whole school week (I forget), but we were able to schedule everything else (that was not local) that trip.</p>

<p>I second the idea of making a calendar early on with ALL the schools potential audition dates written on it, including regional. Based on that, we decided to eliminate a couple schools all together, and we also chose a couple of “lower priority” schools that my son did DVD auditions for.</p>

16

<p>D plays flute, and, like flute1298, we decided to have auditions done on site. </p>

<p>9 = total auditions (spread out early November - early March)
8 = live on site
1 = we had to send a cd because of date conflict</p>

<p>9 = budgeted # of missed days (combination of full and half) from school but actual is probably a bit higher because of flight changes and additional ‘recovery time’</p>

<p>enrolled for 4 APs (Chem, Math AB, Gov/Pol & Spanish)
Dropped Spanish in the Fall, when we realized what we were up against</p>

<p>One thing we do that we really really like is that we get to town a day in advance, and do a walk-thru to get our bearings… and find the rehearsal rooms, find the teacher’s studio etc. It makes the whole process dramatically easier for us.</p>

<p>And we take earplugs for D so she can sleep thru DH’s snoring…</p>

17

<p>Hi lastbird, I am a high school senior doing auditions this year for music programs…Actually, I’m done with my auditions now and have decided where I’m going!!!</p>

<p>Anyways, as far as time spent on auditions…I did 3 auditions. I scheduled 4, but cancelled the 4th because it was a back-up school and had already gotten in to 1 of them so I didn’t need the back-up college.</p>

<p>Time depends on how many auditions of course, and how far away they are. Driving vs. flying also. Another factor is whether you have to be there for 3-6 hours, or for 2 days. Different schools have different requirements. I had both of those. For my first audition, which is where I’m actually going, it was run from about 9 am-1 pm, and then optional activities after that. Another one was a similar schedule. Then, a 3rd audition was where you had to be there on campus the day before from about 5 pm-11 pm doing stuff all til the end, and then be back the next morning, staying til about noon, and then with other activities beyond that being optional. We drove to 2 of mine and took a plane to 1, in which my flight was unfortunately delayed. If you have to fly, make sure you schedule a flight that arrives at least several hours ahead of when you want to be there, if not a day before. I arrived the night before my audition, and although it was a few hours late, I was fine.</p>

<p>So, on the audition where it was the night before and morning thing, it took 2 days. We had to drive that afternoon, barely getting there before the required time. I wasn’t able to leave earlier because I had just taken a semester final at school that morning, and on finals days we’re out at noon, left right away. Avoid scheduling auditions like that with finals if at all possible. I really couldn’t avoid it that well. This particular college had a prescreening CD and then the on-campus audition was only for that time, no other options! However, teachers were understanding and I actually could have chosen to take those semester final exams another day at school. However, it would have been difficult to find a time for that, but if I really wanted to, my teachers were ok with it, and those finals were both for AP classes (AP Calculus & AP European History).</p>

<p>On one audition, it only took that day because it was very close to home. On the audition with the late flight issue, it was that night and the whole next day. I flew home the night of my audition yet. The day that I flew there I could have gone to school for about 3 hours, but I was tired and already knew we we’re doing that much in those classes somehow that day, so I just stayed home that morning before going to the airport. I was also able to schedule this audition on a weekend in which I had the next Monday off from school for a holiday, so that in case my flight was really delayed because of weather it would be ok and then I’d also have Monday to finish homework that I wouldn’t be doing while at my audition. I brought homework with me on the plane, but ended up not doing it, so don’t plan on your daughter getting a lot of homework done on the audition trips because it doesn’t always work, especially if you’re flying.</p>

<p>If you are auditioning at 6-10 schools, definitely try to schedule 2-3 in one trip if they are in somewhat similar locations to reduce the amount of separate trips spending and time used, as well as school days missed (or work days for parents).</p>

<p>School- In total, I only missed 1 day of school! I was really lucky of when the auditions days were and when my school had days off. The one day missed was when I stayed home before my flight, so I could have gone that morning, bringing that down to half a day missed. The 2-day night and next morning one, the one after final exams, so we were done with school by noon when I left, and that was a Thursday, and we only had finals thru Thursday, with Friday off! So that worked out well, and then the third audition that was on a Saturday and really close to home, so I didn’t have to miss Friday either.</p>

<p>Work- My dad missed 1.5 days of work for the 2-day audition Thursday-Friday thing, and then he didn’t miss any other days, with the one being on Saturday and the flying one I went by myself. I was offered a deal with the college that they would pay half my flight for me, so that was awesome!</p>

<p>So, if there are days off from school try to schedule auditions then if possible with the college, or take Saturday options if they’re offered. Schedule some later that you might not want to go to (like back-up schools) so that you could cancel them if you get an offer early from a previous audition.</p>

<p>As far as schools and how they deal with auditions, that will be different depending on the high school. My high school is a private, Catholic, college-prep high school that is known to have a rigorous academic program in this area, and surprisingly, my teachers we quite understanding overall about auditions. Like I said, I would have been allowed to reschedule my finals for that one day, and rescheduling finals at my school is almost not allowed, so…they’re pretty strict on that.</p>

<p>I’m in 4 AP classes and while it is difficult with piano auditions and competitions, I’m managing it. Time management is the key to it. I schedule out when I’m doing all my homework day by day, rather than just doing whatever homework assignment/paper whenever I feel like it that weekend. Try to go ahead on homework the last few weeks before audition season starts if possible. With 4 APs, (plus a 5th one as independent study) and 2 regular classes, my grades have gone down, but only slightly. To give you an idea of the extent of grade changes, my cumulative GPA is around 3.9, so I’ve gotten around that each semester, and for 1st semester of senior year, I got about a 3.7, so down enough, but considering my classes and auditions, it wasn’t too bad. </p>

<p>Early in the school year, make sure your daughter pays attention to figuring out which of her teachers may be sympathetic about auditions. Unfortunately, some do not care or maybe do not know what auditions involve. Hopefully there are some, at least 1-2, that do care. Find those and make arrangements for extentions on assignments if possible. Some teachers at my school post class notes online, so I had them do that. In my hardest class, I hate missing the lectures, so I was allowed to record the class with my voice recorder. Some teachers allow that, while others have issues with it. In another class, still an AP one, there was a paper due on the Friday I was gone on the plane, which I could have probably done but I explained to the teacher how I had to get stuff ready for the auditions with practicing finishing touches on my music that week and packing up audition stuff the night before, so he allowed me to turn in the paper on the Monday when we didn’t have school, turned it in online. So, talk to teachers a couple weeks ahead of time and they may be sympathetic with late assignments or recording lectures so you don’t have to rely on some else’s notes, I really don’t like that.</p>

<p>And by the way…I saw that your daughter is a pianist- that’s my instrument too. I applied for and will be majoring in Piano Performance this fall, under a BM program, so if you have any specific questions for piano auditions let me know! (can post questions here, or private message me also if you want)</p>

<p>I know this is rather lengthy, but I hope that at least a few things I said are helpful!</p>

18

<p>I was reading through my recent post, and thought of a few more things that may be helpful!</p>

<p>Senior year classes- If your daughter is taking 2 APs senior year, is she taking an AP class now as a sophomore, or at least some honors courses? Don’t go into 2 APs plus auditions with no advanced courses experience. If she is, great, then she’ll be more prepared for handling that with auditions.</p>

<p>Second, with a school’s experience, you say her high school doesn’t have much experience with auditions for music students. Neither does my school. They have a couple people go into music each year, but not much, maybe 1-2 students a year. In my class, I know there’s at least 3 of us going into music. The college counselors at my school seemed to know a little about it, but not a great amount. For another idea you can try to get teachers to be understanding about it is that since I knew some of my teachers (past and present high school teachers) enjoy classical music, I offered them a copy of my audition CD…just a nice little gift to make them more understanding about missing class. It sounds like sucking up to them, but it may help.</p>

<p>Third, don’t schedule all auditions at once. Don’t have them all be within 2 weeks, having 2-4 each week and possibly missing the entire week of school. Spread them out a little so there’s some time in between to recover mentally, fix problems in pieces if something didn’t go well, and catch up on homework.</p>

<p>Fourth: Have you and your daughter already visited the colleges she plans to apply to and audition at? Do this ahead of time if possible, so you know if it’s a school you even want to bother auditioning at. Also take lessons with possible professors at the colleges when you visit ahead of time as doing this on audition weekend can add extra time away from school, if this is even possible since some colleges do not allow lessons on audition days/weekends.</p>

<p>Talk to you later maybe!</p>

19

<p>Good information, iluvpiano. Thank you!
That’s an interesting idea about sharing your audition CD. It’s a nice gesture and may have helped your teachers understand your situation a little better.
I have made a note to spread out those visits and auditions!</p>